The Necessity Of The Gospel - [Romans 1:16-20]

Our Father in heaven, what a blessing it is to gather together this morning as

a people called out by you, Father, redeemed by the work of

your Son.

Lord, as we meet here this morning, we just pray that you would

enable us to look at your word to see what it says about our society and about

our societal needs.

And Father, to just be reminded of the grace that you have shed

so lavishly upon each one of us.

Father, bless our time.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Well, I would invite you to open your Bibles to Romans chapter one.

And I thought, you know, we've talked about a lot of social issues.

I was just reading about, I don't know how many of you followed this week, but there was

a vote in Ireland on gay marriage.

Did you see that?

It went down in flames.

No, no, no.

Of course it didn't lose, it won.

But this article I read said that the key point wasn't the approval of

homosexual marriage.

It wasn't even that people were after the destruction of marriage per se.

They were looking for approval of the homosexual lifestyle.

And I found that a very interesting analysis because as we read it in Romans chapter one, and I'm going to skip

ahead of what we're going to look at this morning and just look at a very familiar

verse, verse 32 in Romans chapter one,

though they know God's decree that those who practice such things deserve to die.

And as we think about homosexuality, that's what the Old Testament would say about it.

And we understand that sinful behavior in general deserves death,

certainly the wrath of God and eternal death, if not temporal death, that they deserve to die.

They not only do them, but give approval to those who practice them.

And this man was saying, now he wasn't a Christian.

And he said, this is what the ultimate issue was over there in Ireland, is that they wanted

approval for homosexuality.

They wanted the stamp, society's stamp of approval.

And they got it.

And people were chanting and cheering and running around the streets.

Big victory.

It can be, if you, if you, you know, and over the last several weeks, um, we've talked

about a lot of social issues.

And if you study social issues in our world today, what happens as a Christian, what happens to

you?

It's depressing.

Of course, it's depressing.

It's like, it seems like, you know, we're on the inevitable slope.

You can call it a slippery slope.

I guess it is kind of slippery and it is a slope.

So slippery slope.

And it seems like it's an inexorable decline.

Why?

Because it is an inexorable decline.

Things are going to get worse and worse.

So we look at Romans chapter one and is there any hope?

And I think there is.

So let's look at, uh, beginning of verse 16.

And really, if you kind of, let's just put it this way here.

Here's how I want to view this morning and Romans chapter one, beginning of verse 16 and following.

It's like this.

The good news is first.

And then the reason we need the good news comes along.

And, you know, by the end of the chapter, it gets a little depressing.

And so we have to go, wait a minute, let's go back to verse 16 and read that again.

And that's kind of the idea with our society.

If we get involved in just kind of the, well, what, uh, the new American standard version,

which we won't be reading this morning, but it says, God gave them over, God gave them over and we can watch it.

Just God that gave them over.

God gave them over.

I mean, we see, um, regardless of political party, we see politicians

generally following the culture and saying, you know, this is just the way it is.

We have to accept it.

God gave them over.

God gave them over.

God gave them over.

And we'll see the reason for that here in a moment.

Romans chapter one, verses 16 to 20.

The apostle Paul writes for, I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God

for salvation to everyone who believes to the Jew first and also to the Greek

for in it.

That is to say in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith

as it is written.

The righteous shall live by faith for the wrath of God is revealed from

heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who buy their

unrighteousness, suppress the truth for what can be known about

God is plain to them because God has shown it to them for his invisible attributes,

namely his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived

ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made.

So they are without excuse.

And, you know, just to focus on those last few words there is so

common.

I mean, if there are two questions that you hear from unbelievers over and over again, what do you think the most two

common questions unbelievers ask?

And actually I would argue they are both addressed in this passage.

Two most common questions that unbelievers ask.

Okay, how do you know God exists?

That would be the third most common question.

Or maybe it is the most common, but I mean the most, if they are not just being totally confrontational and one of

them is still confrontational, but two very common questions, maybe they are not the most.

Let us take a survey of all the unbelievers here this morning.

I saw a couple of hands.

Simon.

Yes.

Okay.

If God is so good, why do bad things happen?

That is a very common question, right?

Very common.

What is the other very common question that I am looking for anyway?

Joni.

Okay.

What about all the people who have never heard your version of the truth?

What happens to them?

If God is so fair and so wonderful, how come they do not really get a chance?

Well, there it is.

So they are without excuse.

Why?

Because even what is known about God is suppressed in unrighteousness.

They even suppress that truth.

So we will talk a little bit about what happens to them and what happens to

people who, or why do bad things happen to good people.

But I am going to be sharing some of what G .I. Packer in his book,

Concise Theology, wrote.

And he said this.

He said, Scripture assumes and experience confirms.

Well, that is kind of scary.

But anyway, experience confirms that human beings are naturally inclined to some form of religion,

yet they fail to worship their creator whose general revelation of himself makes him universally known.

Is that true that most people hold to some form of religion?

Yes.

We are naturally religious beings.

Now, some people say that we have a God -centered hole in the center of our heart.

I hate that.

Because here is the truth of the matter.

The truth is that each of us has a soul, whether we want to acknowledge that or not.

As such, we are a spiritual being.

I mean, even just think about this.

We have our brain.

I was talking to Charlie about this a couple of weeks ago.

Our brain is doing multiple things at once.

Like right now, you are probably balancing your checkbook while you are listening to me.

Seriously, you do have a number of things going on in your head at one time.

Why is it that you flit from one thought to another, to another, to another?

And Kathleen is laughing back there because she is balancing her checkbook.

Why is it that our minds flit about and just randomly do things?

Well, it is because it is not random.

Our brain is actually multitasking.

There is a book out right now that talks about how it is like a town.

People are running around doing different things in your head.

Now, this is going to sound very scary to you because you want to watch out for the guy in the town that is really nuts.

But you have multiple things going on in your head at one time, and that is how come you

can tend to feel like you have AD &D.

AD &D or ADD or whatever.

My speller person is on vacation.

Anyway, we are

religious beings.

We have a sense that there is something going on that is beyond us because it is

true.

We look around at the world and we go, this is a great world.

This is a complicated world.

How did it ever come to be?

I was just thinking about this last night.

How is it that atheists can believe that essentially either matter always

existed or just spontaneously came into being?

There are only two possible ways that it could have been, right?

And that things orchestrated themselves just so that life exists right as it does right now,

accidentally.

Now, I can go through all the mathematical permutations.

I cannot really right off the top of my head.

I am sort of lying.

I am not really though because there are all these numbers.

If the world tilted at a slightly different bit on its axis, it would shake uncontrollably

all the time.

There are all these things.

If the gravitational pull was not just thus and such, water would go off in the space and all these kind of things.

Or if it was too much, we would all shrink down and be flattened.

All these things are all true.

But what does that tell us?

That we are cosmically lucky or does it tell us or does it tell everyone

that there is in fact a creator?

Now, that is not how we prove there is a creator but it is certainly a proof that there is a creator.

But people hold that truth down in unrighteousness.

Why?

Because they want to worship a God not who exists but a God of their own

creation.

Now, and that is what general revelation, two kinds of revelation, right?

General revelation, specific revelation or special revelation.

General revelation being creation.

Now, general revelation, listen carefully, cannot save anyone.

Why can't it save anyone?

Because it doesn't have the gospel.

It just makes us aware that there is something greater than us, okay?

Special or specific revelation alone can save because it has the gospel.

It tells us about the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, Packard goes on to say, he says, both theoretical atheism and moral monotheism.

What is moral monotheism?

Okay, you believe in one God and you understand the difference between right and wrong.

I mean, he is kind of nebulous here because here is what I would say.

I mean, we could say that moral monotheism, we could argue, or some might argue,

not we wouldn't argue, that maybe Islam is moral monotheism.

I would not argue that because the moral part is off.

So I would say, let's just almost set that aside.

And he says both theoretical atheism.

Why does he say theoretical atheism, by the way?

Because it's not possible.

People who say, and how many of you have had somebody say, I'm an atheist?

I mean, my dad used to say that.

And yet, you know, even through his own conversations, he would indicate that he did believe that

there was a God.

He just didn't want to say that he believed that there was a God because there's an understanding that if there is a God,

you're accountable to him.

And so, you know, I don't believe in God.

Well, yes, you do.

You just don't believe in the Christian God because you don't want to be responsible to him, but you are ultimately.

Anyway, he says, atheism is always a reaction against a preexisting

belief in God or gods.

And moral monotheism has only ever appeared in the wake of special revelation.

And so what I really think he's trying to say about moral monotheism, by the way, is he's just trying to talk about

Judaism in the Old Testament and Christianity now.

So this is a concise theology.

So he's saying things in really abstract and with all due respect, sometimes

not very helpful terms.

So scripture explains the state of affairs by telling us that sinful egoism

and aversion to our creator's claim, creator's claims, drive mankind into

idolatry, which means transferring worship and homage to some power or object other than God, the

creator.

What do we see in the Old Testament over and over and over again?

Israel does what?

Goes after other gods.

And sometimes what does even Isaiah write about them?

How do they how do they find these gods?

Do they read about them in some magazine or book?

They sit around, you know, almost like at a campfire with a knife and a piece of wood and say, you know what?

I'm going to make a god.

I have this piece of wood.

I have this piece of stone.

I'm going to craft something really attractive or powerful looking, or maybe it's bigger, you know, whatever.

Today it's in my hands and I'm shaping and fashioning it.

Tomorrow I will fall down and worship it.

Now we listen to that and we think, well, that's pretty stupid.

Well, we've just discovered the truth about unbelief.

It's not inherently bright.

When you worship the creation, you're going to worship something.

The question is, what are you going to worship?

The God who is or part of his creation?

Even something that you make with your hands.

We would see really in Isaiah 44, I think 46,

other places, he just talks about our proclivity towards creating idols.

In this way, he goes on to say, apostate humans, which means all

unbelievers, suppress the truth and have exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look

like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.

You know, it's interesting.

You can watch almost any movie or documentary about Egypt and what do they worship?

These gods that are like South America.

You look at the gods they worship and they are like funky composites of birds or

reptiles or birds and reptiles and people and all kinds of odd things.

You know, what is the sphinx?

You look at that and you just go, whoever thought of that?

Because men want to find something to worship other than God.

They suppress the truth and unrighteousness.

They have this spiritual need in them and so they, as Packer says here, they smother and

quench as far as they can the awareness that general revelation gives them of the transcendent creator

judge.

And so what do we see over in Ireland?

They take this vote and they heartily approve of these, of the homosexual

lifestyle and what they're really doing is what?

Shaking their fist at God, saying we will not have you rule over us.

We will worship what we choose to worship, which is us.

What we believe, what we think is right.

God, you don't have any power whatsoever over us.

Take this.

And as we've been talking about for the last many weeks, this in turn, Packer goes on to say, leads

to drastic moral decline with consequent misery as a first manifestation of

God's wrath against human apostasy.

Step -by -step, God gives them over.

Moo, a biblical scholar, says this, he says, talking about

how the wrath of God is revealed against unrighteousness, he says, it indicates actual

inflicting of God's wrath.

Says when and how does it take place?

Although God will inflict his wrath on sin finally and irrevocably at the end time, there

is an anticipatory working of God's wrath in the events of history.

In what way is God's wrath right now being revealed against all unrighteousness?

Okay, he's giving them over to the things that they want to do further and further depravity.

True.

Charlie, ultimately in his son, right on judgment day.

But how else right now are we seeing the wrath of God revealed?

Okay, AIDS, but I would take it a step further.

I have a good friend, a man I went to seminary who's several years younger than me and his

wife right now, she's on, she's about to die of cancer.

That is not against her, but that's the wrath of God being revealed.

Disease is a way, it's not just AIDS, it's cancer, all the,

every disease that we have, every illness that we have, they're all unleashed.

Why are they inflicted upon us?

Because of sin.

This is God's judgment.

This is God's wrath.

This is just, but again, his wrath, I'm going

to, you're probably going to recognize this, but God's wrath is not like my wrath,

which is good.

But God's wrath is settled.

It's an indignation.

It's a permanent affront.

He has been offended by our sin continuously and

it's settled.

He's going to, there's a day coming when he's going to ultimately judge it in

Christ, like Charlie said.

But even right now we are getting bits and pieces of his wrath and these are the kinds of things

we deal with.

But at the same time, we're still getting his grace and his mercy.

Isn't modern medicine a mercy?

Yes.

You know, and even as I listened to the vice president's son died today of

a brain tumor.

And it's just interesting, even listening to the doctors as they talk about the brain, what you quickly realize is that

when it comes to a brain tumor, when it comes to a number of things regarding specifically the brain,

that they really are guessing.

They know some things, but there are a lot of things that they don't know.

When it, when the Bible says we are wonderfully and fearfully made, what does it mean?

We are wonderfully and fearfully made.

And I'm here to tell you right now, and probably most of you won't be around, but in a thousand years,

if, if the most of you probably won't be around, if the Lord tarries a thousand years from now, they'll

look back at what we did now and they'll medically, and they'll say, you know, we were the

equivalent right now of medieval medicine with leeches and bloodletting and stuff like that.

They will look at chemotherapy.

They will look at different things and they will say, you guys didn't know anything.

What you did was barbaric.

You know, how could you cut somebody's brain open and try to take the tumor out or whatever?

They're going to look back on what we do now.

And they're just going to think it's, they'll be horrified.

But God's wrath is revealed against us.

And even right now, but I want to back up a little bit.

Let's go back.

I want to get back to the good news because I want to focus on that for the remainder of our time here.

Back in verse 16, he says, for I'm not ashamed of the gospel, which we all know is

the good news.

I had somebody email me this last week and say he was trying to live the gospel.

If you read that, what do you know right away?

Anybody?

What's that?

He doesn't know what the gospel is.

Why?

Because you cannot live the gospel.

The gospel is good news.

It is a declaration of what has been done, not what you do.

If you're talking to your Mormon friend, you're talking to your Catholic friend, you're talking to somebody else, they will say, well, you know what?

I'm trying my best to live the gospel.

You don't, you don't just kind of come up and say, well, you dope, you can't do that.

What do you say?

Yeah, you come up and you say, well, you can say, what's the gospel?

Or you could say, I don't know how to tell you this, but you can't live the

gospel.

The gospel is what Jesus did.

It's not what you do.

It's not a series of commandments.

It's not a series of sacraments.

It's not a series of things that you do because if it is, if your righteousness, if your good works have

to get you into heaven, guess what?

It's not going to happen.

It's like trying to watch me dunk.

It's, it's ugly.

It's really ugly.

I'm telling you, it's getting uglier by the day.

I don't even know what, you know, well, I do know what would happen to be about a month on the couch is what would happen

nowadays, but the gospel is good news.

And look what it says there for it is the power of God.

It's so sad to me sometimes to hear somebody say that the gospel doesn't work.

The Bible doesn't work it.

And what do they mean by that?

Problems haven't gone away or, you know what?

I keep telling somebody the Bible, but they haven't believed yet.

I need something else.

This isn't changing their life.

I need something besides the Bible.

Pastor, do you have something else?

Let's go back to this.

It says, for it is the power of God.

Is there anything more powerful than that?

We would read in Hebrews that the word is sharp.

It's active.

It's living.

It's able to divide between bone and marrow.

What does that mean?

It means that it cuts people open when it wants to, when the Holy Spirit

uses, when he uses that to convict someone of their sin, it is the power of God.

It's divine.

It does not fail.

So when people hear it and they don't believe, then what should we go?

Should we just say, well, then that proves it.

The gospel doesn't work.

No, the God, the gospel, Paul writes, is the power of God for salvation.

It changes lives.

But the bottom line is that God does not choose to

activate that in every single person at the same time, or, you know, when we want it to.

It's the power of God.

It's what we heard last week from John chapter three.

You must be born again, but you must be born again when the Holy Spirit works on you, when he

changes you, when he brings you to life.

The power of God for salvation to everyone who believes to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

I don't want to get into that other than to say this, that, you know, the gospel first came to the Jews.

Then it went to the Greeks, but look at this in verse 17, for it is the righteousness of God

for, and it is the righteousness of God.

But what is the righteousness of God?

What is that?

Go ahead.

Okay.

The righteousness of Christ.

Why do we need the righteousness of Christ?

Why do we need the righteousness of God?

Well, first of all, let me just say, I'm glad you said the righteousness of Christ.

Why?

Because it automatically shows that we need something.

We need the righteousness of another, what we call in theological circles,

in which case, or in which instance, sometimes they let me into theological circles, but it's called

alien righteousness.

Why?

Because it's a righteousness that doesn't exist in me.

Again, getting back to this idea of the gospel, the gospel isn't something I do.

It's something that's been done.

It's something that must be imparted to me.

I need an alien righteousness.

That is to say, a righteousness that I do not have and that I cannot have on

my own.

There's nothing I can do to get it.

The righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith.

As it is written, the righteous shall live by faith.

So again, getting back to this idea of I want to live the gospel, we read it right there.

It says, the righteous shall live by faith.

Well, if by faith, I mean,

I'm going to faithfully do works that are going to be the righteousness of God, then I'm going to

epically fail.

I need to believe.

I need to have faith.

I need to have that faith given to me.

Ephesians 2 would say, I need to have that faith given to me that will

grant me the righteousness of Christ, the righteousness of God, that alien righteousness.

And then I live by faith, not by what I see, but what I know to be true, what I've been taught,

what I've heard from scripture.

That is what will grant me ultimately heaven.

So this is the gospel.

And this is the antidote to all we see in our society.

This is the antidote to gay marriage.

What should we do?

Go over to Ireland and carry signs around that says, Westboro Baptist, God hates

homosexuals to clean it up for the little children, some of whom happen to be my grandchildren in the congregation.

Are we going to carry signs that say God hates homosexuals?

No.

Why not?

Why wouldn't we want to do that?

God hates a lot of things.

I mean, why focus on one sin?

And you know what, if I was going over to Ireland and I saw all this revelry around

homosexuality and about the approval of homosexual marriage, I really hate to call it gay

marriage because there's nothing gay about it.

Gay has a meaning and it has nothing to do with homosexuality.

I like to take gay back.

You know, Russ.

Okay.

And there's some truth to that, right?

Like Russ said, like a parent loves a child, but hates the behavior.

God loves the people, but hates what they do.

Hates the sin, loves the sinner, hates the sin.

That's true.

But Charlie,

say it again.

Okay.

Our protest is not the power of God and salvation.

What do you mean by that?

Okay.

So in other words, us telling them that homosexuality is wrong, it's not the answer.

Us telling them that there is forgiveness, that there is

an alien righteousness available to them, that they need to get to heaven.

That's the answer.

But you know, to get back to this, God hates the sin, but loves the sinner.

Well, Psalm 5 says something about that.

It says that that's not really theologically quite correct, but there is a truth to it in

this sense.

Again, getting back to this idea of living the gospel.

I hear and I read people saying that, you know, what they really need to do in their life as a Christian

is get back to the basics and get back in a right state with God.

I understand what they're saying, right?

That they've gone on a spiritual vacation, they're in the spiritual wilderness, and they realize they need to change their

behavior so that they will feel rightly.

But the question gets back to what Russ said.

Will God love them more if they are his children,

if they modify their behavior?

The answer is no.

You know, did you love your child more before he, you know, walked and talked like a Christian or after he

walked and talked like a Christian?

When was that?

Or, you know, which was it?

Did you love them more before or after?

You might be happier that they're saved, but you didn't love them more.

You didn't love them less.

You didn't go, well, okay, now you're really my child.

Woohoo!

How much more for God?

If he, which is what Ephesians 1 says, if he loved you, if he set his

affection upon you before the foundations of the world, then when you repented and believed, did he say, well,

now, you know, I loved him before, but now I really love him.

You know, she was a little shaky for a while there, but now I really, really love her.

She's really beautiful to me.

His love was settled always eternally.

Why?

Because he chose to love you and he already knew what the end result was going to be.

His affection was settled when he said, Jesus, go and

redeem a people for us.

Now, going back to Romans 1, we

were talking about, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their

unrighteousness suppress the truth.

What do we bring?

They're suppressing the truth.

They're saying, you know what?

I don't believe in God.

I don't believe that this creation is created at all.

I believe it's happenstance.

What do we do to that?

We bring the truth of scripture against it.

And again, what happens?

It's the power of God.

The Holy Spirit convicts.

He changes things.

It's not our job to change things.

If we could change the culture by waving a wand.

In fact, I wanted to spend a minute here talking about this idea of changing the country.

Some people have a theology of what they call reconstructionism, which I find interesting because re

indicates what?

Doing it again, right?

And I'm like, okay, construction, like building, right?

So rebuilding.

Well, we're going to rebuild the United States as a Christian nation.

Well, the problem would be what?

It never was a Christian nation.

I mean, certainly if someone were to say to me that this country is based on biblical

principles, would I agree with that?

The foundation of the country, biblical principles.

I would say I agree with that.

And one of the reasons why I would is interestingly enough, I learned in a secular high school

and I could remember Mr. Carr saying as clear as day.

Well, actually it wasn't clear because he kind of slurred everything he said, but he said,

mankind is inherently evil.

That is the basic founding principle of the United States.

Why is that?

Because you can't trust anyone.

Checks and balances, the government, you can't trust anyone.

Anyone who gets too much power, what will happen?

They understood that absolute power corrupts and it corrupts absolutely, right?

So in order to avoid having a king who just says, oh, look at all these grand things I've done

myself, they put checks and balances in the system.

Now, I don't know if they still teach that in public school.

Probably not.

Mankind is inherently good.

Trust the government.

The government is your friend.

Hey, you know, things change.

God gave them over.

The devolution, you know, of society.

But let's just go back to the beginning.

Paul introduces us all by saying he's not ashamed of the gospel.

He was looking forward to seeing the Roman church, teaching them.

Not ashamed of the gospel.

Why would we ever be ashamed of the gospel?

Why would we be, Joni?

Okay, that's it.

It's because the reaction of the people we tell.

What do people say when they hear that you're a Christian?

You know, maybe they've known you for a short period of time.

I'm a Christian.

What do they say?

One of those born -again types.

That was one of the first responses I ever got to my confession of faith.

Well, not a born -again Christian, which confused me because I didn't know the

difference.

Because there isn't a difference.

You know, it'd be okay if I would have said, no, no, no, I'm not one of those born -again Christians.

I'm just somebody who comes in on Sunday morning, kind of checks the attendance card, and then I go home on my merry way.

Okay, well, that's fine as long as you're that kind of Christian.

But if you're a Christian today, then you're presumed to have some kind of

mental deficiency, right?

There must be something.

You know, you'll come around.

You know, that's okay.

You're a Christian.

Okay, fantastic.

But sooner or later, you'll realize that that's just stupid.

I mean, you seem like a nice person.

I thought you were pretty reasonable and rational and intelligent until you told me that you're a Christian.

Now, all that is canceled out.

You know, there's something.

You probably need some help, medication.

If there's ever been a time when people are ashamed of the gospel or maybe the

social pressure is such that you should be ashamed of the gospel, it's not like we're being persecuted.

It's not like we're having to live in caves.

I talked about that months ago about how the Christians who lived in Cappadocia, they lived in caves and people

thought, oh, that was a money -saving way or maybe, you know, to get out of the

noonday heat or to live because they were being persecuted.

You know, you go live in the caves.

We don't live in that kind of society.

But we live in a society that says, if you are a Christian and you actually live

out what you believe because that is the real problem, right?

It's okay if you just say you're a Christian and it doesn't impact your life.

That's fine.

But if you say you're a Christian and that affects how you live, how you interact with the world, well, then you

are the problem because you are intolerant of people and you

are judgmental and you are this and you are that.

And the truth is, all you really want to do is you want to tell people what?

The good news.

I want to tell people the good news about Christ.

I want to tell them about his perfect life in my place, his death in my place, his resurrection.

Why?

Because it's because of that that I can have hope, that I can,

Lord willing, when that day comes, live like my friend's wife is living

right now where she says, having had cancer now for the last five

years, she just says, I just want to go home.

I just want to be with my Lord and Savior.

And where her husband can say, friends, would you pray for my wife, Margie, that she might go home

to be with the Lord Jesus Christ.

For an unbeliever, there is no hope.

Why?

Because they have suppressed that truth and unrighteousness, but they know they have suppressed it.

They know there is a God.

They know they're going to be accountable to him.

And guess what?

As they face death, as they lay there on their deathbed, if they have such a thing,

they say to themselves, I know I'm going to face God and I know I don't even have a fig leaf to cover myself.

I have no hope.

So what are we really doing?

Are we out to shame people?

No.

Are we out to change people's minds about social issues?

No.

What we're out to do is present the truth about Christ and to allow

the Holy Spirit to use his word as the power of God to change people.

He changes people.

We can't change the society, but we can.

You know, MacArthur, I think MacArthur's ministry, grace to you, they say they

unleash the truth of God, you know, verse by verse.

We can basically unleash the culture of our country one soul at a

time.

That's what we're called to do.

We can't change everything.

We can't, oh, I was talking about reconstructionism.

Let me just say this.

If we could, and this is kind of the point, if we could impose the 10

commandments on the United States right now, and that's what some people want to do, make it

the law of the land.

I mean, they'd really like to take most of the Old Testament and make it the law of the land.

What would we get?

If we reconstruct the United States, would it be better?

Okay, so let me see if I rephrase this, and you tell me if you think I'm right or not, that we might

get some outward conformity, right?

That people might say, well, okay, I can agree not to blaspheme in public.

You know, I can agree not to steal, and I can agree not to do this, that, and the other thing.

You know, I can even, like we used to do in Massachusetts, keep the Sabbath holy,

meaning, I mean, this is the home of Puritanism, right?

So nothing happens on Sunday except for going to church.

That's keeping the Sabbath holy.

We could do all that.

Would that change our society?

And the answer is no, but I take it a step further.

Do you really think that's what would happen?

What do you think would happen?

They'd rebel.

Yeah, people, you know, for a while they'd go along, then they did whatever was right in their own eyes, but I take it a step further

because we live in a dramatically anti -Christian society.

I think if these Reconstructionists ever had their way and they found some way to impose the moral law of God on people,

I think we'd have an armed revolution.

I think it would take about 10 minutes to start and probably about 20 minutes to finish.

You know, it'd be 98 % versus 2 % and it would be pretty ugly.

We'd wind up with a very, we'd probably wind up in concentration camps is probably what would happen.

Why?

Because here's the message of our society today.

Our society is, we will have, the message is, we will have no king rule over us.

We don't want God.

We don't want him in the public square.

We don't want him in the public school.

We don't want him in public business.

It's okay if you have him in your home.

It's okay if you have him in your church, but please leave him there.

That's the message of our society today and it's probably going to get worse.

So our response to that is, what?

What is our response to that?

Evangelism.

It's the gospel.

It's giving people the word of God and letting the word of God loose on them.

And God does whatever he wants to do.

You know, I, we don't really have time to go through everybody's testimony this morning.

I just know for me, I don't even know, I have absolutely no idea how many times I heard the gospel

because I was completely indifferent to it.

If I ever heard the gospel before I heard the gospel, what does that mean?

If I ever, if it ever passed through my ears before I understood it, I

don't remember it.

I really don't.

I don't think I knew a born again Christian, probably born again.

See, I did it.

Somebody who even said they were a Christian until I was in the army.

Maybe I did, but I didn't know it.

What's our response?

Our response is the gospel.

It has to be the gospel.

We, we needed the gospel.

That's how we got saved.

That's how other people are going to get saved.

We're not going to change the country, but we can change the people that we interact with.

And that's our responsibility.

You know, if you want to know why it is that people in your family, your close friends don't believe,

maybe it's because you've never preached the gospel to them.

In every situation, the right response is,

and not to correct their behavior, not to say, you know what, homosexual marriage is an

abomination before the Lord.

It is, but that's not going to solve the problem.

Homosexual behavior is an abomination against the Lord.

It is, that's not going to solve the problem.

Stealing is wrong.

I mean, we can go right down the list of every sin that you already know the list.

The answer is not to correct the behavior.

The answer is to give them the ultimate answer, which is the gospel.

All right.

We need to close.

I, uh, we will in a few weeks, we'll be talking about some different

questions that have arisen about baptism.

So that'll be good, but we're, uh, we're kind of, we're going to be going on a little different series here for the

summer.

So with that said, we need to close some prayer.

Father, many times

we are, we are vexed, not as

you are.

We are vexed by our society, by the things that we see in the world, by the

moral decay, by the step -by -step destruction of our societal

order that we see all about us.

And we can be almost paralyzed.

I think in the problems are too great.

The, the situation is too dire.

We need some kind of massive moral revolution.

And the truth is, Father, you've given us the answer.

The answer is not to change our society.

The answer is to preach the gospel, give the gospel to people and trust you

to transform lives, transform you, trust you to open eyes,

to reveal the truth of the spiritual bankruptcy of everything that people believe now,

to lead unbelievers to Christ, even as you led us

to Christ by the preaching of your word, by the work of your spirit.

Father, for each of us here, would you give us just a desire not to rail against

social ills, not to complain so much about what's going wrong in our society,

but to preach Christ and him crucified, we pray in Jesus name.

Amen.